Introverted Reader Features

Oooh, Cal Morrisey. *sigh* The leading man in Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie, Cal is a dreamboat. Yes, it's an old-fashioned word but that's what he is. He's good-looking, he's effortlessly charming, he owns a successful business, he's a great cook and a loyal friend... He has it all. But the charm is more out of habit than a genuine desire to charm the woman he's with. He's a heartbreaker. He doesn't set out to be one, but women can't resist him and he's not ready to settle down so he's left a string of disappointed women in his wake. Then he meets Minerva Dobbs. Min puts him in his place. She sees that the charm isn't genuine and calls him on it. Cal is kind of angry at first but then she intrigues him. Who is this woman who sees through him? Does she see the real Cal underneath everything? He tries to stay away from her but they keep getting thrown together. I believe Cal was described basically as tall, dark and handsome.  Pierce Brosnan popped into my head and wouldn't leave.  So this is my Cal. Cal does have a deep insecurity. He's dyslexic and he struggled with it in school. His father was very hard on him. Anyone wanting to push Cal's buttons just calls him stupid. Stand back when it happens because he has a temper too. Cal sees past Min's apparent dislike of men and starts to rebuild her trust and her own self-confidence. Whenever she needs him, he's there whether she calls him or not. Min is very self-conscious about her weight. Some women are just born with curves and no amount of dieting will change that; Min is one of those women. She sees herself as fat because of her horrible mother…

Karou, the main character in Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone, is a 17-year-old girl attending an arts school in Prague. She has funky blue hair; a short and awesomely sarcastic best friend; a beautiful, arrogant ex-boyfriend; amazing artistic ability; and a double life. Karou carries around a sketchbook with her wherever she goes and her friends at school love looking through it every week to check out the continuing adventures of The Chimera, creatures cobbled together from bits and pieces of all kinds of animals. There's Esa the snake women, Brimstone with his ram's horns, a crow-like creature whose name I can't remember, and more. All of her friends think that Karou is making up The Chimera and their adventures. She's not--they're the closest thing to family that she has. Karou is just awesome. She and Zuzanna play off each other really well. Both smartasses but also genuinely caring about each other. She and the ex-boyfriend are fun to watch. He with his narcissism and she unrelentingly knocking him down a peg or two. She and Akiva are...magic. She manages to attend school and at the same time use this weird portal system to carry out errands for Brimstone, collecting teeth from around the world for him. She might be in Siberia one day and in Borneo the next. She questions Brimstone, but when he continually rebuffs her curiosity about the teeth, she mostly respects his wishes. But you can't blame a girl for being curious, right? She's hugely loyal to her adoptive family and is willing to go to the ends of the earth for them. Karou has a huge heart and she's not afraid to act on her convictions. She knows a tooth trader who wished for knowledge and got it, at the cost of his…

So we already know that I love Scout and Atticus. After my most recent re-read of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, I realized that I've never fully appreciated Jem. The book covers a pivotal few years in Jem's life, between the ages of roughly 10 and 13. Those are some pretty formative years for anyone, but the things that Jem sees set the course for the rest of his life. At the beginning of the book, Jem is a pretty typical 10-year-old. He likes to play and he's curious about Boo Radley, the neighbor who never comes out of his house. He's not aware enough of the outside world yet to realize that some of his actions, like playing about Boo's life, might hurt Boo's feelings if he realized what was going on. That slowly changes though. He's always pretty patient with Scout, a precocious younger sister who would try almost anyone's patience.  He gets frustrated with her at times, but overall, they play well together and she looks up to him.  He generally explains things so that she can understand them.  As he gets older, he starts to condescend to her a little bit, which she resents, but even then he seems to be genuinely trying to teach her what he's learned about life. Jem at first takes his father for granted. He's just Atticus, and he doesn't really do anything, like play sports or hunt or fish. But after one pivotal scene, Atticus gains Jem's everlasting respect. It's not really his actions, it's his explanation for why he chooses not to use his talent for shooting. He explains it in a way that Jem can understand, and Jem begins to emulate his father. ***SPOILERS (highlight the section below to read them)*** By the summer and fall…

Eleanor Vance is kind of the main character in The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. While I can't really bring myself to recommend the book, Eleanor is a fascinating character. Eleanor is a fairly young woman (I want to say she's 30-ish) who's never had the opportunity to be young. Her mother was peevishly ill for years yet ruled Eleanor with an iron fist. Whatever Mrs. Vance wanted, she was going to get. If it literally drove her daughter crazy, all the better. Now that her mother has passed away, Eleanor is living with her sister and her young family. The sister is just as bad as the mother. I don't know how Eleanor turned out to be so passive when she lived with two shrews, but I guess it was easier for her to submit than to fight. Anyway, the sister treats Eleanor like unpaid help. When Eleanor asks to borrow the car, which she helped pay for, the sister pitches an ungodly fit. Yet somehow mousy little Eleanor digs up the courage to do what she wants for a change. She defies her sister and takes the car off to Hill House. Julie Harris as Eleanor Eleanor has been invited to haunted Hill House by a psychic researcher.  I don't remember the details exactly, but Eleanor has been the center of some poltergeist activity in the past.  The researcher has invited people like her to the house to see if they can prompt it to show them what it's capable of. At Hill House, Eleanor is more truly free to be herself. She's been such a lonely, meek soul for so long that it takes her just a little while to loosen up, but she does it. She becomes fast friends with the other people in…

So, since it's Valentine's Day and all, it's time to feature a character crush. This time, it's Rhett Butler. I know, how predictable can I be, right? But there's a reason that so many women love this man. Rhett. From the first time he appears on the page, I think my eye was drawn to him as often as Scarlett's was. He is handsome and physically powerful, but he has a commanding presence as well. He seems to dominate the room easily when he wants to, but he's capable of sitting back and observing and blending in until he blinds someone with a pithy, sarcastic remark. "As she chattered and laughed and cast quick glances into the house and the yard, her eyes fell on a stranger, standing alone in the hall, staring at her in a cool impertinent way that brought her up sharply with a mingled feeling of feminine pleasure that she had attracted a man and an embarrassed sensation that her dress was too low in the bosom. He looked quite old, at least thirty-five. He was a tall man and powerfully built. Scarlett thought she had never seen a man with such wide shoulders, so heavy with muscles, almost too heavy for gentility. When her eye caught his, he smiled, showing animal-white teeth below a close-clipped black mustache. He was dark of face, swarthy as a pirate, and his eyes were as bold and black as any pirate's appraising a galleon to be scuttled or a maiden to be ravished. There was a cool recklessness in his face and a cynical humor in his mouth as he smiled at her, and Scarlett caught her breath. She felt that she should be insulted by such a look and was annoyed with herself because she did not feel…